orpheus and eurydice
by the general girl
Summary: If he is gone, she thinks she would have known. If he is gone, something in the air would have been immeasurably changed. — sasusaku.
1. orpheus

—

—

 **orpheus**

—

—

Loss is an angry pit.

Sakura spends her mornings like this:

Wake before the sunrise, run through her _kata_ , make tea. Eat a small breakfast of leftover onigiri at the little wooden table in her kitchen, the window thrown wide open to let in the morning mist. On weekends, she lets herself sleep until the sun is streaming full across her bed, the light still buttery and new the way it is before noon.

Loss is an angry pit: it begs to be fed.

Her afternoons are more varied. She might see to some troublemaking bandits outside the village or she might visit the market; Mondays through Wednesdays she works at the hospital. This isn't a Hidden Village, so the local doctors usually don't need her; it seems when people aren't forced to kill for a living, the rate of grotesque injuries are astoundingly low. Instead, they summon her for surgeries and she treats what they can't.

They marvel at what she can do; they wonder at her ability.

She marvels at their open hands, at their smiles; she wonders at the way these ordinary people can lay down roots, how they are not half-starved in the heart.

Sakura drifts, from village to village, the hunger of loss dogging her footsteps as she retraces his.

—

—

The places change, but her routine does not. The motions are a ritual—she half-thinks it may bring him back.

Loss is an angry pit, it throws the miles she has traversed back in her face like so many inadequate offerings (he was supposed to have been a god, once).

—

—

Sakura spends her mornings like this:

Wake before the sunrise (her body carefully arranged in the space where she thinks he must have once laid, trying to find an imprint of his warmth), run through her _kata_ (she imagines him doing the same, the light following his fluid movements, touching his skin as it touches hers), make tea (scalding, the way she likes it best, a small ache in her chest because she doesn't remember how he'd made his).

Her map of him isn't perfect.

There are things that she'd never had a chance to learn, things that she's forgotten— not every place she goes is somewhere that he has stepped. She wanders: away from him, and then back again, perpetually in orbit.

Loss is an angry pit, a relentless god. Sakura knows it won't relinquish its hold on her until she gives it a body or a name, so she searches, and she chases his ghost.

If he is gone, she thinks she would have known. If he is gone, something in the air would have been immeasurably changed. She clings to the thought, or rather, the thought clings to her, and the only way she can escape the itch of it is to give in to its demand.

Loss is an angry pit, and the only thing hungrier is her hope.

—

—

Sakura traces his old letters and the rumors and her faith until she arrives in a tiny seaside hamlet.

 _A foreign man had indeed passed here, many years ago,_ a woman tells her. _He was as beautiful as he was sad._

 _Passed?_ Sakura asks. _Do you mean passed through?_

The woman looks at her, a sympathetic tilt to the head, _No, child. He'd been grievously poisoned, and he died all by himself in a cove a few miles out._

 _He'd insisted,_ the woman explained as Sakura's world quietly shifted, _because he was afraid the toxin was contagious._

 _Was he buried?_

 _The poison,_ the villager says helplessly.

Sakura nods, reassuring the woman that they'd done right.

She asks for the directions, and sets out.

—

—

The violent waves had reshaped the shoreline in the intervening years. The small system of caves nestled in the cove had only one entrance; a wall of rock and rubble greets Sakura when she arrives.

She thinks of his bones, on the other side. She thinks of him, all alone. She starts to dig.

—

—

Ino had warned her to not lose herself in her grief for him. Naruto had begged her to turn back, to stop the self-flagellation, that Sasuke wouldn't have wanted her this way. They didn't know that it'd never been about him—not entirely.

Leaving had been the most selfish thing she'd ever done.

(Love is a selfish thing; one can never not involve the self—)

—

—

The moon is high when she finally finishes. She summons her chakra; the light flares into life around her.

Her keening wail is almost lost to the sound of the waves.

—

—

The sobs wrench themselves out of her, and it's her gods taking their last tithe. Sakura doesn't know when she'd collapsed to her knees, when she'd plunged herself into darkness, but she doesn't need the light to remember the barren cave around her.

Loss hadn't even left her a body to bring home.

—

—

She exhausts herself and eventually slips into a fitful sleep. She dreams of him; of the moments right before, and then then years after. Had the tides stolen him away? Or had he brought one last flicker of flame to life with his final breath? She dreams of following a trail of bones: a metacarpal, a femur, the tibia; of collecting and rebuilding him and laying bushels of apples at his feet. _I really thought I would find you_ , she told him, _I really thought I would have known._

—

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It's still dark when Sakura jolts awake. She rises to her feet, heart racing, every part of her electrified and alive.

It's high tide, and she thinks she must have imagined it in the noise of surf, when: "Sakura."

—

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She remembers the stories—of lovers turning to dust, of bodies turning to salt. _Don't look back, don't turn_.

—

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She only realizes she'd been holding her breath when it leaves her in a rush.

She feels him against her back, she feels her name in an exhale against her hair, she feels the careful hand he lays on her arm.

—

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She imagines the worst: she imagines stealing a glimpse of him, and then watching as he fades away. Or his body, perfect and alive, then crumbling to ashes. _Don't look back, don't turn_.

—

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Sakura turns. She turns, and there he is.

* * *

 _ **pt 2: eurydice**_


	2. eurydice

—

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 **eurydice**

—

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He wakes in darkness.

There is a dull roar close by, and for a second there are giants hovering overhead, ghosts clad in the armor of dead samurai, eyes red as the moon—

He wakes in darkness, to the dull roar of the surf.

There is nothing else.

—

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It takes him four days to leave the dark, damp coastline is steep and spare, and for a while he sits in a weak stupor.

Freshwater drips from the rocky ceiling; he forces himself to drink. Small crabs scuttle across the floor; he forces himself to eat.

The sun rises on day four. He forces himself to leave. He forces himself to survive.

—

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He regains his strength by the sea, but with an absence of weakness he finds that he has no other focus. No memories, no context, not even a name.

The thought slots neatly into place, and he—

He panics.

—

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He runs. He finds that he is fast, that he is strong. He runs and the world blurs and he does not know where he is going. He doesn't stop until something inside of him snaps, leaving him empty and exhausted on a forest floor.

—

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What else is there?

—

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He opens his eyes in the misty morning light, his face wet with dew. Above him, trees tower towards the sky, the branches mostly bare. The clouds have parted for the first time since he woke. Early spring.

He realizes that this is the first he will remember.

—

—

He spends his mornings like this:

Despite missing an arm, he is geared towards survival. He'd known he was strong, but he finds that he is also good at traveling, at being alone. His body knows how to find shelter, how to pick what is good to eat from what is not.

When he first ventures into a small village, looking to exchange labor for clean clothing, for some food, the people shrink from him, and that too is—is familiar.

He doesn't—he doesn't prod at that. He tries not to wonder who he'd been, because:

He'd woken up in that cave alone, and he'd stayed there for far too long, hoping that someone would come by, that someone would know him, that someone would help fill the void of his memories. He'd stayed until he'd become disgusted with himself, and he'd chosen to survive instead.

The facts are:

He is missing an arm. People see him and they are immediately afraid. No one had come for him.

He thinks he will rebuild himself anew.

—

—

The wind takes him eastward.

—

—

He takes odd jobs to earn coin, and tries to see if he'd had any place to call home. He discovers his preferences—his habits, his likes and dislikes—all over again.

He spends his mornings like this:

Wake before the sunrise, before the morning mist has time to clear; stretch slowly, and then a run to escape the restlessness of the night before. He breaks his fast with a small meal, and always a cup of tea if he happens to be in a village with a teahouse or an inn. He takes it hot, with a small sprig of some of the mint that he takes to carrying with him.

Every day brings a new, tiny revelation, but nothing consequential, nothing that amounts to even a scrap of memory.

He still can't bear to give himself a name.

—

—

He eventually finds himself at the capital. The daimyo's palace is surrounded by a grove of cherry trees, and as the nobles observe _hanami_ within the gates, the common folk celebrate in their own way, with rest and food-laden mats spread haphazardly over the grass as they enjoyed the fleeting beauty of the blossoms.

He looks up at the canopy of pink and, unbidden, thinks: _Sakura_.

Wind shakes the trees and petals fall in a soft rain. He holds still, and lets himself be covered.

—

—

That night, he jolts awake—frantic, panting, hand searching for something next to him. A name. A name. Not the name of the blossoms but the name of a person.

Not his name, but the only one he has.

 _Sakura_.

Sakura.

—

—

She comes back to him slowly.

First: her name, and the color of her hair.

Sakura. Pink. Eastward.

Then in a market: the scent of apples.

He remembers white on red cloth. He remembers a trembling hand holding his steady. He remembers green eyes.

He would hate this woman if he could. He hates that he can recall with clarity the purse of her lips and the arch of her brow when he can't even remember himself.

He would hate her, except above all he remembers her love.

—

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 _Do you know of any women with pink hair and green eyes?_

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 _Has a woman with pink hair gone through here?_

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 _I don't recall her family name but her first name would have been Sakura._

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When he asks the shopkeeper about the woman with pink hair, he doesn't encounter the lack of recognition that he's used to; instead, the man nods.

 _Why yes! She passed through here a while ago. Funnily enough she was looking for someone too. A dark-hair man missing an arm,_ the man pauses and openly goggles at his pinned sleeve. _Seems like she was looking for you_.

He'd stopped breathing when he'd heard _yes_ , and now his heart feels like it'll give out as well.

Someone had tried.

She'd looked for him.

—

—

She'd followed his footsteps, when he'd still had a name and a purpose and a past, and now he follows hers.

Some of the people he encounters remember him, and one day he rediscovers his name because once he'd thought to give it to an old woman at a fruit stand.

 _You said your name was Sasuke-san._

There is no rush of recognition, no sudden onslaught of memories. The name doesn't feel familiar; it doesn't feel right or wrong or like it'd been his.

Only—

 _Sasuke-kun._

 _Sasuke-kun!_

 _Sasuke-kun, please don't hurt them._

 _Sasuke-kun...take me with you!_

 _Sasuke-kun, we're bringing you back with us!_

—

—

It's dark when he finds the place where he'd died.

Clouds blot moonlight from the sky, and this is just a place. That is just a cave. The sun will rise.

But.

This is where he'd died, and even though it has been a time, a part of him is afraid that if he walks inside—

He forces himself to stop. To take a breath and concentrate on the sound of the sea.

Someone had recently been here: the mouth of the cave must have collapsed at some point, but there are fresh tracks in the sand where rubble had been dug out to create clear passage.

He thinks that he will find her inside. For her, he knows he is willing to walk back into the darkness.

—

—

She'd been asleep, body curled inwards and turned away from him, but the moment he steps inside the cave, her shoulders tense and he knows she's awake.

He can just make out the pale halo of her hair, but he knows the slope of her shoulders and the length of her arms.

 _Sakura_.

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All he has is his name. He has his name, and he has Sakura.

—

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She doesn't move—she's so perfectly still and so perfectly far.

He'd woken in darkness, almost two years ago, and he sees that she's led him—

—

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"Sakura."

Distance shrinks, and she is—

—

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He'd thought he'd remembered her perfectly, but his scant memories could not conjure in perfect detail the warmth, the shade of her eyes in the night.

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Sasuke has his name, and he has Sakura. Everything else he knows she'll help him find later.

—

—

Sasuke follows Sakura into the morning light.

 **fin**


End file.
